GUEST POST: Protect your smart home against hackers

Unless you are a Luddite or some other kind of technophobe, you and your family may have already started filling your home with the latest smart home devices. It makes sense to embrace the new and exciting developments happening to our households. They make our lives easier, cheaper and more environmentally sustainable. Families that have installed the smart doorbell video camera are able to answer their front door from their smart phones and speak directly with the visitor. Those that have the doorbell connected with a smart door lock can unlock the door from afar to trustworthy visitors or allow a deliverymen to leave your important valuable packages safely inside the door. Families with large homes have found that smart thermostats have reduced their utility bills 10-15% on heating bills.

This rapid revolution of home life technology has been driven by the recent advancements in data bandwidth and improved data protocol technology (which allow devices to communicate with lower power consumption). It is expected that by 2022, every household will have 50 smart devices connected in their home (up from the current 10 smart devices).

However there are some quite large risks with participating in this revolution and the risks are even scarier with young families. Many of these new devices do not have fully developed security protocols, and with only ONE device compromised, you are subsequently compromising ALL of your devices. Consider a hacker having the ability to control the aforementioned smart door locks (giving boundless physical access to your home) and smart doorbell video camera (which would notify when you have left home).

Thankfully there are currently numerous ways to ensure your home is protected whilst the continued protocols continue filling the gaps in their security. In the accompanying infographic we show some basic yet compelling approaches to secure your home, family and gadgets.

This is a guest post and infographic is by Joseph Mack from smarthomeSAGE, a blog that analyzes the impact that smart home technology has on home life.

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Hey, how's it going? I'm Sarah, a mum of two little girls, living in the Garden of England that is Kent.
Life is great, but don't expect it to be all rose tinted glasses in this blog. (Maybe rosé tinted?). Being a Mum is the nuts, an absolute game changer, but also flippin' harder than I was expecting it to be! This blog is a little snippet into the life of a (once) cool Mum, muddling through this chapter of life called PARENTING x